


It Happens This Way

by aerye



Category: Law & Order
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-18
Updated: 2012-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-31 09:01:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerye/pseuds/aerye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don't have a name for this thing between you, this association, this connection, this involvement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Happens This Way

It happens this way.

You meet for tennis Sunday afternoons. Usually doubles, usually a match arranged through the club. Always followed by dinner and drinks, followed by sex. Every time, exactly the same. Template of an affair. The tennis gives you a reason to meet, the dinner a chance to linger, the drinks an excuse for letting go.

You go to his health club—yours doesn't have tennis courts, only racquetball. His is nicer anyway. You eat dinner someplace close, someplace quiet, someplace neither of your friends might go, though even if they saw you together it wouldn't mean much. Just two people who work together, sharing a meal. You drink scotch, sometimes vodka. He sometimes drinks beer, and when you think about kissing him, that's the taste you remember.

The first time you kissed him it was in the locker room. He was just coming out of the showers and you were just going in. You were in each other's way and you did that little dance, the one where you both move to the left, then the right, and you laughed a little at this commonplace absurdity, two men in towels doing the hokey-pokey, and he smiled. Without thinking you leaned over and kissed him. He kissed you back.

That was the first time.

Sometimes you go to your place but mostly you go to his. You're still seeing Sally but she knows you're not available on Sundays. You play tennis on Sundays. Still, you worry sometimes that she might drop by unannounced, so mostly you go to his place.

He lives alone, a small one bedroom close to the office. He's getting a divorce but you don't think it's because of you, though perhaps it's because of the fact of you, the fact that there is someone like you. He hasn't said and you haven't asked. When you talk, you talk about politics, you talk about the law. You talk about your cases. You disagree about almost everything.

You rarely know what he's thinking.

Once you took over on a case he was handling. His daughter had emergency surgery, appendicitis you think, and Schiff asked you to cover. His files were meticulous, his handwriting curiously old fashioned, his notes simple but precise. You didn't agree with his tactics and would have argued the case differently, more agressively, but you had no time to organize anything else, so you followed the case notes and used the cross examinations he had prepared. You thought about how you would explain the loss to him, how you would explain to him the arguments he should have used instead.

The jury was only out for forty-five minutes before they convicted. You left a post-it note on the file and put it back on his desk. You never said anything more to him about it.

You don't have a name for this thing between you, this association, this connection, this involvement. You aren't friends: you never were, you never wanted to be. Certainly you're colleagues but colleagues don't fuck each other, and lovers—you wince at the word.

If he's in love with you, he's never said.

Sometimes you think he's in love with someone else and you can't tell if that bothers you or not. There's a detective from the 27th, a man with dark hair and blue eyes. You see them together sometimes and sometimes when you see them together, you think he's in love. You know he doesn't look at you the way he looks at this detective. But then he doesn't look at the detective the way he looks at you.

When you're inside him you don't care that you can't put a name to it or the way he looks at anyone else. You're lost in the heat of him, the rise and fall of him, the tight clasp of his hands on your shoulders and the way his legs wrap around the back of your thighs. The way his eyes never, ever look away. The way he sees you. There is nothing else in your life like this.

This is how it happens.


End file.
